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Background: Hyperaldosteronism is an endocrine disorder leading to persistent and severe hypertension. G protein-coupled estrogen receptor 1(GPER1) is regarded as a potential receptor of aldosterone (ALDO). Objective: This study aimed to investigate the effects of GPER1 on aldosterone (ALDO)-induced hypertension and inflammation in mice. Methods: GPER1-knockout (KO) and wild-type (WT) C57BL/6j mice were divided into control (CON, normal saline treatment), ALDO (subcutaneous injections of 600 g/kg/d ALDO), and ALDO + eplerenone (EPL) (subcutaneous injections of 600 g/kg/d ALDO and 100 mg/kg/d EPL) groups (n = 5 per group). Fourteen days after drug administration, the heart rate and tail blood pressure of the mice in the different groups were measured. S100A8 and IL-1β protein expression in arterial tissues were detected by western blotting, NLRP3 expression was assessed using immunofluorescence, and CD68 expression was investigated using immunohistochemistry. Results: GPER1 deficiency alleviated ALDO-induced diastolic blood pressure (P< 0.05). In addition, the protein expression levels of IL-1β, S100A8, and CD68 showed significant decreases in the arterial tissues of GPER1-KO mice after combination treatment with ALDO and EPL (all P < 0.05). Conclusion: We discovered attenuation of hypertension and vascular inflammation of GPER1 KO mice only on the basis of mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) blocking. Collectively, our study indicates that GPER1 might become a therapeutic target of hyperaldosteronism in controlling the residual risk of cardiovascular disease when MR antagonist alone is not satisfying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major controlling factors of organic matter and its enrichment model of the black shale from the Wufeng-Longmaxi Formation were explored by investigating the vertical variation characteristics, as well as major element and trace element abundances in the Wuxi Bailu section. The results show that the sedimentary tectonic setting of the Wufeng-Longmaxi Formation in the north-east margin of the upper Yangtze platform is located on the active continental margin, which is a passive continental margin and continental island arc. The parent rock in the source area is mainly felsic volcanic rocks mixed with small amounts of sedimentary recycling materials. Due to increased plate activity and a drop in sea levels, terrigenous pyroclastic input increased. The palaeoclimate was semi-humid, and a robust dysoxic-reduction environment and a high level of palaeoproductivity, causing the formation of the organic-rich shale in the Wufeng Formation. At the base of the Longmaxi Formation, the sedimentary water body was affected by global transgression, showing a strong anoxic-reductive environment, and the paleoclimate was a warm and humid condition. The palaeoproductivity level was high, resulting in the formation of organic shale. Due to the sea level drop at the top of the Longmaxi Formation, the sedimentary water was in an oxic-reduced environment, but the input of terrigenous pyroclastic matter increased. Because the paleoclimate was warm and humid and the palaeoproductivity level was high, organic-rich shale was formed. The findings demonstrate that terrigenous clastic input circumstances, palaeoproductivity conditions, and paleoredox conditions had the greatest influence on the enrichment of organic matter in the Wufeng-Longmaxi Formation. Thus, organic matter enrichment was controlled by multiple paleoenvironmental factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pores and fractures are important components of flow channels in coal-measure gas reservoirs. While considerable studies have been conducted on pore structure evolution, very few studies have investigated the fracture distribution and self-similarity characteristics. To reveal the characteristics of fracture distribution in coal and shale reservoirs, computed tomography studies were performed on 15 coal and shale samples from the Shanxi and Taiyuan formations. The results show that the fracture distribution of samples of the same lithology differs significantly, and the fracture distribution heterogeneity of shale samples is much higher than that of coal samples. In shale, the heterogeneity of fracture distribution is mainly caused by pores and fractures smaller than 2 µm in the z-direction, with relatively little contributions from pores and fractures in the x and y directions. However, the heterogeneity of fracture distribution in coal is mainly controlled by pores and fractures larger than 2 µm in all directions, and the difference between the three directions is minor. It was shown that a great number of microscopic pores and fractures contribute to the highest fractions of porosity in different lithological samples. This method is useful for determining the fracture distribution characteristics in shale and coal-measure gas reservoir. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pore structure and pore water of deep shale gas reservoirs are unique. Their complex occurrence mechanism is the root cause of gas content variations, which restrict successful and economic exploration and exploitation. In this study, nuclear magnetic resonance experiments were performed to characterize the pore structure and pore water microscopic migration in deep shale gas reservoirs of the Wufeng–Longmaxi Formation in the Luzhou block. The pore structure particularity and its influence as well as that of pore water on gas occurrence are discussed here. The results show that total organic carbon (TOC) content has weak positive correlation with the proportion of micropores, negative correlation with the proportion of mesopores, and strong positive correlation with the proportion of macropores. These indicate that organic matter developed mainly macropores and micropores, while inorganic minerals produced mainly mesopores. The proportion of producible porosity is relatively low (11.81% on average), reflecting the poor pore connectivity in the studied deep shale. Both the proportion of macropores and the TOC content are strongly positively correlated with the proportion of producible porosity. Organic matter controls the pore connectivity of deep shale by controlling the development of macropores. The producible porosity correlates positively with total porosity, indicating that shale with high total porosity possesses high producible porosity. The pore structure at different burial depths (especially different beds) has significant differences, reflecting strong interlayer heterogeneity. Compared with the shallow Qiongzhusi Formation, the deep shale has lower porosity, smaller dominant pore size, poor pore connectivity, and similar T2 spectrum distribution. Mineral anti-compaction protection pores and reservoir fluid over-pressure are the key to the development of organic pores in deep shale gas reservoirs. When adsorbed gas converts to free gas, the gas-in-place will directly be affected by whether the deep shale gas reservoirs can provide enough storage space for excess free gas. After centrifugation, there was still considerable residual water in the studied deep shale, and available pores decreased with increase in water saturation. There was a negative correlation between gas content and water saturation, indicating that primary formation water has a vital influence on the occurrence and enrichment of shale gas. These findings provide a collective theoretical basis for accurate evaluation of deep shale gas reservoirs, which is significant for the commercial exploration and exploitation of deep shale gas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In shale reservoirs, the organic pores with various structures formed during the thermal evolution of organic matter are the main storage site for adsorbed methane. However, in the process of thermal evolution, the adsorption characteristics of methane in multi type and multi-scale organic matter pores have not been sufficiently studied. In this study, the molecular simulation method was used to study the adsorption characteristics of methane based on the geological conditions of Longmaxi Formation shale reservoir in Sichuan Basin, China. The results show that the characteristics of pore structure will affect the methane adsorption characteristics. The adsorption capacity of slit-pores for methane is much higher than that of cylindrical pores. The groove space inside the pore will change the density distribution of methane molecules in the pore, greatly improve the adsorption capacity of the pore, and increase the pressure sensitivity of the adsorption process. Although the variation of methane adsorption characteristics of different shapes is not consistent with pore size, all pores have the strongest methane adsorption capacity when the pore size is about 2 nm. In addition, the changes of temperature and pressure during the thermal evolution are also important factors to control the methane adsorption characteristics. The pore adsorption capacity first increases and then decreases with the increase of pressure, and increases with the increase of temperature. In the early stage of thermal evolution, pore adsorption capacity is strong and pressure sensitivity is weak; while in the late stage, it is on the contrary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study and exploration practice of shale gas accumulation has focused on the static system comparison, key parameters analysis, reservoir characteristics, enrichment mode etc. However, the research on dynamic recovery from the original hydrocarbon generation of shale gas to the present gas reservoir is still lacking. The burial history of shale gas reservoir can reflect the overall dynamic process of early formation and later transformation of shale gas reservoir. It controls the material basis of shale gas, the quality of reservoir physical properties, preservation conditions, gas content and formation energy, which is the core and foundation of shale gas accumulation process research. Herein, based on the five typical wells data in the Northeast Yunnan, including geochronological data, measured Ro values, core description records, well temperature data, paleoenvironment, paleothermal, etc., the burial history, thermal evolution history and hydrocarbon generation history of the Lower Silurian Longmaxi Formation were systematically restored via back stripping method and EASY%Ro model. The results show that 1) the differences in the burial history of marine shale in Longmaxi Formation can be divided into syncline type and anticline type. 2) The shale gas accumulation process can be divided into four stages, namely the source-reservoir-cap sedimentation period, initial accumulation period, main accumulation period, and adjustment period. 3) Based on the characteristics of burial history and preservation conditions, the areas with wide and gentle anticline, far away from the denudation area, and buried deeply with good fault sealing ability are priority structural locations for the shale gas exploration in northeast Yunnan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neuronal cell types are essential to the comprehensive understanding of the neuronal function and neuron can be categorized by their anatomical property. However, complete morphology data for neurons with a whole brain projection, for example the pyramidal neurons in the cortex, are sparse because it is difficult to trace the neuronal fibers across the whole brain and acquire the neuron morphology at the single axon resolution. Thus the cell types of pyramidal neurons have yet to be studied at the single axon resolution thoroughly. In this work, we acquire images for a Thy1 H-line mouse brain using a fluorescence micro-optical sectioning tomography system. Then we sample 42 pyramidal neurons whose somata are in the layer 5 of the motor cortex and reconstruct their morphology across the whole brain. Based on the reconstructed neuronal anatomy, we analyze the axonal and dendritic fibers of the neurons in addition to the soma spatial distributions, and identify two axonal projection pattern of pyramidal tract neurons and two dendritic spreading patterns of intratelencephalic neurons. The raw image data are available upon request as an additional asset to the community. The morphological patterns identified in this work can be a typical representation of neuron subtypes and reveal the possible input-output function of a single pyramidal neuron. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurately mapping brain structures in three-dimensions is critical for an in-depth understanding of brain functions. Using the brain atlas as a hub, mapping detected datasets into a standard brain space enables efficient use of various datasets. However, because of the heterogeneous and nonuniform brain structure characteristics at the cellular level introduced by recently developed high-resolution whole-brain microscopy techniques, it is difficult to apply a single standard to robust registration of various large-volume datasets. In this study, we propose a robust Brain Spatial Mapping Interface (BrainsMapi) to address the registration of large-volume datasets by introducing extracted anatomically invariant regional features and a large-volume data transformation method. By performing validation on model data and biological images, BrainsMapi achieves accurate registration on intramodal, individual, and multimodality datasets and can also complete the registration of large-volume datasets (approximately 20 TB) within 1 day. In addition, it can register and integrate unregistered vectorized datasets into a common brain space. BrainsMapi will facilitate the comparison, reuse and integration of a variety of brain datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dongpu (东濮) depression is a Mesozoic subsidence and Cenozoic fault basin developed within the North China craton. Since the deposition of Permo-Carboniferous hydrocarbon source rock, the depression has undergone many tectonic disturbances and uplifts. The source rocks have undergone nonuniform uplift, deformation, deep burying, and magmatism, and those led to an interrupted or stepwise evolution of the hydrocarbon source rocks in Qinggu (庆古)-2 well. We have investigated the history of burying, heating, and hydrocarbon generation of the Permo-Carboniferous hydrocarbon source rocks not just on the basis of tectonic disturbance and deep burying, but also with new studies in apatite fission track analysis, fluid inclusion measurements, and the application of the numerical simulation of EASY% Ro. The heating temperature of the source rocks pulsated upward from Indosinian to Himalayan stages and reached a maximum during early Himalayan. This led to the stepwise increases of organic maturation and multiple stages of hydrocarbon generation. This study delineated the tectonic stages, maturity evolved ranges, and the intensity of hydrocarbon generation of Permo-Carboniferous source rocks in Qinggu-2 well. The hydrocarbon generation mainly occurred during Indosinian and early Himalayan. The early Himalayan stage hydrocarbon generation is the larger one, but the Dongying (东营) movement, which happened at the end of early Himalayan, may destroy the trapped oil and gas. Thereby, future exploration will need to pay more attention to the Dongying movement effect in Qinggu-2 well area, and it may get new breakthrough in Permo-Carboniferous oil and gas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correction to: I Scientific Reports i https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-64665-2, published online 13 May 2020 In the original paper, the Data Availability statement was incomplete. "The neuron morphologies and codes used in this study are available from the corresponding author upon request" now reads: "The neuron morphologies and codes used in this study are available from NeuroMorpho.Org (http://www.neuromorpho.org/NeuroMorpho Linkout.jsp?PMID=32405029)" The original Article has been corrected. [Extracted from the article]

Individual cells play essential roles in the biological processes of the brain. The number of neurons changes during both normal development and disease progression. High-resolution imaging has made it possible to directly count cells. However, the automatic and precise segmentation of touching cells continues to be a major challenge for massive and highly complex datasets. Thus, an integrative cut (iCut) algorithm, which combines information regarding spatial location and intervening and concave contours with the established normalized cut, has been developed. iCut involves two key steps: (1) a weighting matrix is first constructed with the abovementioned information regarding the touching cells and (2) a normalized cut algorithm that uses the weighting matrix is implemented to separate the touching cells into isolated cells. This novel algorithm was evaluated using two types of data: the open SIMCEP benchmark dataset and our micro-optical imaging dataset from a Nissl-stained mouse brain. It has achieved a promising recall/precision of 91.2 ± 2.1%/94.1 ± 1.8% and 86.8 ± 4.1%/87.5 ± 5.7%, respectively, for the two datasets. As quantified using the harmonic mean of recall and precision, the accuracy of iCut is higher than that of some state-of-the-art algorithms. The better performance of this fully automated algorithm can benefit studies of brain cytoarchitecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]